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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22826782">Read from the Treasured Volume</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acephalous/pseuds/Acephalous'>Acephalous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Read from the Treasured Volume [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fix-It, M/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:55:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,351</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22826782</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acephalous/pseuds/Acephalous</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Books have always been important for Henry Peglar</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Peglar/OMC, John Bridgens/Harry Peglar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Read from the Treasured Volume [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1727248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Terror Bingo (2019)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Muster Books of the Royal Navy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For my Terror Bingo square: Henry Peglar</p><p>Many thanks to jolly_utter for the beta help</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Henry is thirteen the first time he sets foot on a ship. He keeps his head up, as he goes up the gangway. Pretends he isn’t already missing his father and mother, and his little sister Mae, who had held her toddler’s arms out to him when he had left, and yelled like she had known it’d be years before she saw him again. He recites to himself that he should be grateful for this work: decent work, pay to send home to his family, a place to sleep, and food. It’s the best kind of work he can hope for, without being able to read or write. And it’s a chance for an adventure too, a chance to go somewhere that isn’t London. Henry has never been far from home, much less out of the city before. The prospect of crossing an entire ocean seems vaguely fantastical, like something out of a fairy story.</p><p>He presents his papers to the Lieutenant. Watches as his name is marked down in the muster book of HMS <i>Rattlesnake</i>, and marks his signature with a careful ‘X’, when the book is turned to him. Even the lower deck of the ship seems large, compared to the cramped spaces he’s grown up in. The first sting of homesickness is diminished a little, and he’s caught now between anxiety and excitement, feels like he might tip either way at the slightest push. But then one of the Lieutenants is yelling at him to run a message to the surgeon, and then there’s another order after that and then he’s too busy to notice the ship getting underway. The first rolling swell is a shock, and he almost loses his footing, causing one of the seaman to laugh at him, but not unkindly. He catches himself, and is up onto deck, and at the rail in a moment. The shore is slipping away into the distance, and everything is blue, the world split in two between brilliant sky and deep sea. He’s never thought of the world as open before: the sky was something glimpsed between leaning rooftops, and the horizon was more of an idea than a reality. But here he is, on this ship that feels like it’s alone in the center of the world. It makes him feel very small in the face of all that possibility. </p><p>As the ship works its way across the Atlantic, Henry finds his sea-legs. He learns as much as he can, the sails, and knots, and all the parts of the ship. Learns what a ship feels like in a gale, what St. Elmo’s fire looks like along the masts, what a whale looks like when it breaches into the open air.  </p><p>When HMS <i>Rattlesnake</i> returns from her two years in the Caribbean, Henry transfers to another ship as quickly as he can, can’t imagine wanting to be on shore for long. He sees his family briefly before he ships out on HMS <i>Ocean</i>, long enough to think his parents look much older, to realize that Mae does not recognize him. She cries when she sees him, until he digs out the doll he had brought her all the way from the Caribbean. </p><p>He’s on shore long enough to know he’ll go mad if he stays in London for much longer. He misses the sea, misses having a routine and a clear duty. When HMS <i>Ocean</i> makes sail he is glad to be gone. He’s shipped out as a seaman now, and the new duties are a delight as he learns his way about the rigging. It’s different than <i>Rattlesnake</i>, but he makes friends easily, and the other men are patient enough with him as he learns, answer some of his questions tolerantly enough, and only occasionally laugh at him and tell him to stop thinking so much.</p><p>He’s quick with his hands on the lines, and he likes, more than anything, being up above the deck, trusting his weight to the rigging. Likes the way he can follow an order, and alter a sail and feel the whole ship shift and move differently, make her run better before the wind, or bring her sails in safely. It makes him happy, with a simple uncomplicated kind of joy.</p><p>***</p><p>It isn’t until two years later when he ships out on HMS <i>Talavera</i>, that he realizes he’d been lucky in his postings until now and not all ships are happy ones. The Captain has a temper, and doles out punishment freely. The men aboard are tense, and short-tempered. Henry isn’t sure if their proximity to home, as they sail the English Channel, makes the service better, since at least they are not alone far from all civilization, or makes it worse since the freedom of shore is perpetually close at hand. </p><p>There’s little of the easy comradeship Henry is used to either. There’s the usual card games and chatter off-duty to pass the time, but that’s as like to end in a fight as anything else. The work on the ship is the same though. Henry keeps his head down, and his mouth shut as much as he can, does his work as steadily and carefully as he is able. He takes extra work whenever he can, and at least there’s plenty of that. But even being up in the rigging isn’t as much of a joy as it used to be. The Captain isn’t much of a sailor, so even the ship seems to baulk and complain at being under his command. Henry feels like the ship is some wild and rancorous thing he is fighting sometimes, like the angry thoughts of all these pent-up men has leaked into her ropes and timbers, made the ship feral and unkind.</p><p>Though he’s not quite eighteen, Henry knows himself well enough to realizes quickly that he isn’t the sort of man who is suited to so much silence. By the time a year has passed he’s deeply miserable and exhausted in a way that doesn’t have much to do with physical work. Fresh faces are a relief when a new complement of men come aboard, although most of them seem as dour as everyone else on <i>Talavera</i>. Seaman Will Everett is the exception, with his loud laugh, and open face. He seems to be the only one on the ship not taking everything deadly serious, manages to shrug off insults and petty displays of temper, with ease. Henry finds himself sitting with him over dinner a few days after his arrival. Everett gives him a lingering once over. Henry smiles at him, and Everett leans forwards, conspiratorially.</p><p>“Might you be the only one in good temper on this whole vessel?” He asks low. </p><p>Henry leans forward too, “I think I’ve seen the ship’s cat smile, when he catches a rat.” </p><p>Everett breaks into a grin. “Well, so long as there’s three of us, I think I might survive this.”</p><p>They spend more and more time together after that. It’s a relief to have someone to talk to again, and it unwinds the tension in Henry. When they find a spot alone to sit, Henry finds all his old questions and rambling thoughts springing up out of him: do you think someone has sailed over this exact bit of water before? Do you think others have sat in this spot on this ship, and spoken like we are now? Who do you think they were? Everett pushes at his shoulder, when he speaks like this for too long, laughs at him like he’s telling jokes, though Henry isn’t, or at least not on purpose. Henry doesn’t mind. He likes to make Everett laugh. Likes everything about him really.</p><p>Still, he’s surprised by the surge of want that hits him a few months into his friendship with Everett. Finds himself noticing new things about him, the muscles in his arm, the way his lips curve around a smile, the line of his jaw. All of it makes Henry’s heart race, in a way that is entirely new. He’d paid a woman for sex once, down on the docks at the end of his last voyage. He’d done it out of a vague sense of curiosity as much as anything, and once had been enough to confirm that whatever it the fuss was, it wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat. Later he’d found a man to pay as well, and having the man’s mouth on his cock had been enjoyable. But it hadn’t awakened any kind of driving desire in him, the way he had been expecting based on the way his shipmates had spoken. </p><p>With Everett it’s different, like his mind won’t quite work right, distracted by want. Henry asks Everett to meet him in the hold, and gets a long, considering glance in return. When Henry descends the ladder he’s there, waiting in the dark. Henry crowds him against wall, and Everett laughs, low in his throat.</p><p>“What took you so long?” he murmurs, as Henry kisses his throat, gets his hand down the front of his pants. </p><p>“We need to be quiet,” Henry replies with a breathless laugh, pressing his free hand over Everett’s mouth. </p><p>They find themselves in a quiet part of the ship often in the months that follow. It’s dangerous, what they’re doing, Henry knows it on an abstract way that never quite crystallizes into a real understanding.  It’s hard to focus on anything but how much he wants to touch Everett again. And not just about touching him, even when he should be attending to his work he’s thinking about Everett, what he might be thinking, what he might think of Henry’s thoughts, if Henry can make him laugh. It’s a relief from the dour ship.</p><p>***</p><p>When the carpenter’s mate and the purser are caught fucking the rumour goes around the ship fast as a lightning strike. Henry feels the cold run through him, takes a moment to realize the feeling is fear, pure and edged with panic. He works to keep his face still, but his hands are shaking.</p><p>The news is bringing up something cruel, and satisfied in many of the faces around him. Henry had not though his shipmates particularly kind, but he had not expected how, after the two men are dragged away for court martial, the mood on the ship would lift, as though misery was what was needed to make the other sailors smile. </p><p>Henry’s shoulders have wound themselves with tension, but still he tells himself, he and Everett had been careful. God, he hopes they had been careful enough. He doesn’t speak to Everett, barely sees him, except fleetingly, leaving any part of the ship Henry comes into. By the time of the Sunday Service, when the Captain is up in front of the full ships company, practically frothing as he spits biblical verses and wishes for hellfire and suffering on all sodomites, he realizes he’s being avoided. But Henry can be stubborn when the situation calls for it, and he eventually manages to corner Everett, at a table in the mess, mostly out of earshot of the other men. Everett won’t meet his eye, just stares down into the food he’s slowly stirring on his plate.</p><p>When Henry leans forward to speak, Everett flinches away. Then his face twists.</p><p>“I don’t have anything to say to you.” He bites out, keeping his voice down, “Don’t be stupid. It was just a bit of fun.” </p><p>“Seems like a hell of a risk for a bit of fun.” Henry snarls back, suddenly furious.</p><p>He’s not sure what he would have said beyond that, but there’s a furor of footsteps as the watch changes, and suddenly there’s other men around them.  Everett stands, and stalks away. </p><p>“Don’t come near me again,” he hisses as he leaves.</p><p>The mess of bewilderment and hurt with Everett gets all tangled up in him now, with the shock of finding out just how hard and vicious the other men on the ship are. Tangled up with the fear too, a fear he thinks he should have been smart enough to know to feel earlier. He draws more and more into himself, pushes his thoughts down. Counts the days until his four years on <i>Talavera</i> are done. </p><p>***</p><p>He is tired of the sea after that, tells himself he will not return. Life on shore has its benefits. He can see his family again, can spend time with Mae, who at twelve has grown into a clever and curious girl, and wants to hear all his stories of far-off places. </p><p>He finds work easily enough: he’s young and strong, and there’s always carrying and hauling that needs to be done at the docks. At first it’s refreshing to be done at the end of the day, and not bound on a ship. He strikes up an understanding with a handsome clerk for a few weeks, which is long enough to convince him that whatever need had burned up in him for Everett does not apply more broadly. They enjoy themselves well enough, before drifting apart. </p><p>His enjoyment of being on shore holds for a few short months, before it rapidly begins to gall. He feels constrained, without the sea all about him. The work is dull, and the repetition grates on him. It doesn’t require much by way of skill, and he finds himself missing doing work he is good at. He wants to go somewhere new, not see the same old streets and houses each day. Besides, lifting crates at the dock doesn’t pay well, and he knows that the pay he was sending back to his parents is missed.</p><p>As he approaches a year on shore he finds himself a place on HMS <i>Wanderer</i>, bound for the coast of Africa. Mae hugs him tightly when he leaves, makes him promise to send word of all the places he goes. </p><p>Within a day of setting sail, Henry knows that <i>Wanderer</i> is a much better run ship than <i>Talavera</i>.  There’s none of the seething hatefulness, and the other men are friendly enough. He makes an effort to be friendly in return, but it takes months before he stops wondering what kind of people these men really are: what they’d be like in slightly worse circumstances.  </p><p>The waters off the African coast are beautiful, blue and clear, and the weather is warm. Sometimes they’re close enough to shore to see the green of jungle, a flight of brightly coloured birds. The ship is fast, and being up in the rigging, with the ship running before the wind, is like nothing else in the world. The years pass, and he’s careful to keep any liaison to shore, though it doesn’t happen often: he seldom meets a man he likes well enough to take the risk with. And before they dock in each port he gets one of the literate sailors to write a few words that he can send to Mae.</p><p>***</p><p>When the four-year voyage is done, and he is back in London again he immediately starts searching for another ship to sail with. He signs up on HMS <i>Gannet</i>, then settles in for the few months wait before she sails. He visits Mae frequently, sixteen and horrifyingly grown up. She’s just as keen for her brother’s stories as she was years ago, though, and he does his best to sate her curiosity.</p><p>“Don’t just tell me where you went, tell me what it was like!” She demands.  </p><p>And so he tries. Tries to explain how it feels when a ship is becalmed: like all the life goes out of her, and she’s just something wooden and dead. Or the hustle and strange sights and sounds of a foreign port. Or the way being at sea feels like being at the center of everything, like you are utterly insignificant and vastly important all at once. </p><p>She laughs at him, then gets up and picks up a small box. She opens it to reveal a neat stack of old letters. She picks one up. </p><p>“Is that what being at sea is like?” She asks, “Because what you write is: ‘In Accra. All well. Miss you.’ Do you know what this one says?”  She pulls another letter from the box. “In Tangier. All well. Miss you.”</p><p>Henry winces. “The master’s mate wrote them for me. He’s a busy man. I didn’t want to take too much of his time.” </p><p>She balls up the letter and throws it at his head. He dodges it, laughing.  </p><p>“Well these can’t have taken any of his time. All I’m asking for is a bit of variation. Something that sounds like it comes from my brother.” She smiles at him, looking hopeful.</p><p>“I’ll do better.” He tells her. </p><p>She slaps the back of his head, fondly “You’d better.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. English Songs: and Other Small Poems by Barry Cornwall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In his first few weeks serving on HMS <i>Gannet</i>, Henry settles into his work with a feeling of contentment. He likes the trim sloop very much. She’s fast and nimble, he’s fallen into an easy camaraderie with the other men on his watch, and the officers seem to know their business. And the weather has been fine, and the sea had seemed even wider and lovelier than he had remembered. </p>
<p>In a few days they’ll dock at Gibraltar, before heading west for their Atlantic crossing. It’ll be his last chance to send mail until they reach the Americas. He wants to write a letter to Mae, like he promised, one that says something true about what he sees and thinks. It’s nerve-wracking to have to spool out his thoughts for someone else to write down, especially on a new ship, where he still doesn’t know his shipmates well. But he asks around, and several people point him towards the Captain’s steward, who’s described to him variously as patient, learned, and unable to open his mouth without quoting some damned book or other. Henry’s seen him, going about his duties, and sometimes with a book in his hand from his personal collection, which he’ll happily lend out to anyone with an interest, but hasn’t spoken to the man yet.</p>
<p>The next morning, he spots the steward sitting in a corner of the mess, leafing through a book. He takes off his cap, and approaches him. </p>
<p>“Mr. Bridgens,” Henry says, “I’d heard you sometimes pen letters for others.”</p>
<p>Bridgens starts, then puts aside the book aside. He smiles up at Henry, kindly. </p>
<p>“Mr. Peglar, isn’t it? I certainly do.” </p>
<p>“I was wondering if you could help me? I wanted a letter to send my sister.”</p>
<p>“Of course, give me a moment.” Bridgens sets the book aside carefully, then leaves briefly, returns with a pen, inkwell, and a few pieces of paper. Then he turns to Henry, who’s taken a seat opposite him, expectantly.</p>
<p>“Dear Mae,” Henry dictates, “In Gibraltar. All well. Miss you.’</p>
<p>Bridgens dips the pen back in the ink, then looks back to Henry, poising the pen over the paper. Henry hesitates, long enough that Bridgens has to return to the pen to the inkwell, so the ink doesn’t drip on the page. They sit in silence for a few moments, but when Henry looks up, Bridgens is just looking at him, without a sign of impatience. Henry looks down at the table, fiddles with a gouge in the wood. </p>
<p>“Can you write that I was thinking of her,” he finally says, all in a rush, “and that I looked at the waves today, up against the hull, and I could picture the waves running across the water all the way from our ship’s hull, to the shores of England. And that it’s the same water that I sailed in the Caribbean, and the same water all the other places a ship has taken me, and all the places I haven’t been yet, but will go someday.”</p>
<p>He finishes, and doesn’t dare look up until he hears the pen stop scratching across the page. When he does raise his eyes he’s expecting to see boredom, or amusement, but Bridgens is just looking at him, with a soft look on his face. He hands Henry the letter wordlessly. Henry feels suddenly flustered.</p>
<p>“That isn’t really what I meant, I haven’t the words for it,” Henry tells him, a bit sheepish. </p>
<p>“I think I know exactly what you meant,” Bridgens says, “THE SEA! the sea! the open sea!/ The blue, the fresh, the ever free!/ Without a mark, without a bound/ It runneth the earth’s wide regions round.”</p>
<p>Henry looks at him in surprise, and Bridgens flushes a little, looking embarrassed. He nudges the spine of the book he was reading with a finger. </p>
<p>“It’s from a poem I was reading. I only meant to say I understand.” </p>
<p>Henry is smiling.</p>
<p>“But that’s exactly right. Can you say it again?”</p>
<p>Bridgens looks briefly startled, then repeats the handful of lines for Henry once more. Henry wonders suddenly how many other thoughts he’s had that Bridgens would know just the right words for. Before he can he can speak again, the Captain rings the bell for the Steward, and Bridgens has to hurry away. Henry watches him go, then folds the letter up carefully, mouthing the “The sea, the sea, the open sea,” to himself as he does.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The brief interaction sparks a deep curiosity in Henry. They exchange smiles when their paths cross now, and Henry finds himself watching Bridgens when he’s below decks. As on most ships Henry has served on, the stewards don’t mix much with the sailors, and Bridgens in particular seems apart. He’s not standoffish, has a ready smile, and seems well enough liked. But he’s too bookish for most by far, always with a quote or allusion, which most of the men find odd. Henry finds it odd too, he supposes. But mostly it makes him wonder what Bridgens thinks of, what he’d say if Henry spoke to him again.</p>
<p>When they make port in Gibraltar, Henry posts the letter to Mae. It gives him a certain pride to post a proper letter, and later he stops at Bridgens’s berth to thank him. Bridgens’s manner is a bit stiff with him when Henry greets him, and Henry briefly wonders if he’s not welcome, or if Bridgens wasn’t expecting to speak to him again. </p>
<p>“I wanted to thank you for helping me with the letter,” Henry says. “For helping me get my thoughts out on paper properly.”</p>
<p>Bridgens’s face relaxes into a smile. “Happy to help. The next time you need a letter written, come find me.”  </p>
<p>Henry knows this is the moment he should nod his head and leave Bridgens be, but he finds he doesn’t want to. Instead he says,</p>
<p>“That poem, the one you quoted before.”</p>
<p>Bridgens reaches for the shelf of books above his narrow bed, pulls down a volume, and turns it in his hands. </p>
<p>“It’s by Barry Cornwall. Those lines are from a poem called ‘The Sea’.”</p>
<p>Henry pauses, “Is there more to it?” </p>
<p>Bridgens looks up from the book. “Yes, a bit more.”</p>
<p>“Read it to me?” Henry asks, feeling bold.</p>
<p>Bridgens looks shocked for a moment, and then he nods. Pulls the chair out from his desk for Henry to sit at. Sits on his cot. Opens the book, finds the page, begins to read. Bridgens has a lovely voice, Henry thinks. When Bridgens finishes reading, Henry feels like his face might crack from smiling. </p>
<p>“I never was on the dull, tame shore/But I lov’d the great sea more and more” Henry repeats, mostly to himself.</p>
<p>Bridgens looks up from the page, and returns his smile. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>After that, they seek each other out as much as they can. Bridgens’ duties keep him busy from early to late, with odd hours to spare. He’ll come find Henry if he’s not on duty, or Henry will come down off the deck, knock on the doorway to Bridgens’ berth, and sit in the chair that he’s starting to think of as his. They talk and talk, about places they’ve been, about history, about philosophy. Often Bridgens pulls a book down and reads him passages: stories from old battles, snippets of poetry.</p>
<p>Henry suspects that Bridgens is digging up every bit of writing he has in his little library about the sea or ships, for him. He’s charmed by the way Bridgens seems to take his choice of literature to share with Henry with such seriousness. If he shows extra interest in a particular piece of writing, the next time they speak Bridgens will have found several more like it. If he comes down from his duties exhausted, Bridgens will look him up and down, and pull out an easy bit of comedy. They read through the rest of Barry Cornwall’s poems, through snippets of the Iliad, through Gulliver’s Travels. </p>
<p>He’s charmed too, by how intently Bridgens listens when Henry speaks, even when what he’s talking about is how close the stars had seemed from the foretop that night, and how that had made him feel, to be so far above the deck. Foolish things, that no one else would have bothered to pay mind to. Henry finds himself hoarding his thoughts and ideas, so he can bring them back to Bridgens at the end of the day, and present them to him like they’re something worthwhile. Speaking to Bridgens like this gives him the same feeling as when he first set foot on a ship: all his horizons widening, the world getting larger. He hadn’t realized there was anything but the sea that could make him feel that.</p>
<p>He tries to express it to Bridgens, as best he can, as they talk over a section of the Iliad, and gets frustrated when his words come out a bit tangled.</p>
<p>“It’s just, it’s like walking through a forest,” he tries to explain. “The way is easier if you know the path has been laid for you, if you know someone has gone out before you.”</p>
<p>Bridgens runs his fingers over the embossed spine of the Iliad. He has a look on his face that Henry can’t quite decipher: wistful maybe, a little tired, very distant. </p>
<p>“Books have often been a great comfort to me,” Bridgens says after a few quiet moments, “at times when I would have otherwise felt entirely alone and afraid. I’ve sometimes felt uniquely unhappy, and then found a book that comforted me by showing me perhaps it was an everyday sort of unhappiness. The sort that’s survivable.” </p>
<p>After another long moment his eyes refocus, and he looks back at Henry. Clears his throat. Re-opens the book. Starts to read from it again.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When the ship is becalmed a few weeks later, Henry feels the lack of motion very much. There’s little to do, though the officers try to keep the men busy with make-work tasks, there’s a limit to what they can come up with. It’s hot too, and Henry is going half mad without the kind of satisfying tiredness his work normally gives him. Henry can only play so many rounds of cards with the other men before he’s desperate for more interesting pastime, and he’s not quite sure when that happened. He spends what time he can with Bridgens, but Bridgens’ duties have not lightened. If anything they have increased as the Captain repeatedly hosts the other officers in an effort to take an edge off their boredom. When Bridgens does have a bit of time to himself, he looks worn around the edges, though it never stops him from smiling at the sight of Henry.</p>
<p>One such afternoon, Bridgens reads to him from a volume of Tennyson’s poems. Henry keeps having him go back and repeat bits, so he can get them in his head properly, before Bridgens is called away. Bridgens is tired, Henry can see, and he suspects his repeated requests are annoying. Finally, after the fourth time Henry gets him to re-read the same line, Bridgens gives him a long, considering look. </p>
<p>“Would you like to be able to read this yourself?”</p>
<p>Henry nods. He would, very much, with an intensity that startles him. It hadn’t occurred to him that he could learn. </p>
<p>Bridgens sets the book aside and pulls out a small notebook instead. When he opens it Henry can see it is blank. </p>
<p>“Keep this to practice in.” Bridgens tells him.</p>
<p>And so Bridgens begins to teach him his letters. It’s slow going, he knows he’s slow, that had been drilled into him quite clearly in the little schooling he had had as a child. Bridgens never seems to think so, is never anything less than patient with him. They keep at it after the wind lifts again, as the sails billow and the ship moves again, keeping it up as the months pass. Henry brings carefully written alphabets to Bridgens. Starts to sound out the words and then short sentences Bridgens writes out for him. Eventually he manages to read a paragraph from out of one of Bridgens’ books He looks up at Bridgens who has leaned in close over his shoulder, watching the movement of Henry’s finger across the page. They both break out grinning. </p>
<p>“Well done, Mr. Peglar,” he says.</p>
<p>“Call me Henry, please.”</p>
<p>Bridgens smiles gets a little broader. </p>
<p>“Only if you call me John.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>As Henry’s reading improves, he starts borrowing John’s books to read on his own. He still sits with John when he can, though he reads to John sometimes now.  It’s a new kind of delight, like being able to see the world through someone else’s eyes. He begins to write too. It starts with his own letters to Mae, in which he writes to her of all the sights along the South American coast. </p>
<p>Gradually the notebook he had used for writing exercises begins to fill with other snippets.  Bits of prose and lines of poetry that he wants to remember. He re-writes them and alters them so that they’re better reflections of what he thinks and feels. Henry writes his words backwards sometimes, because it amuses him, and because he doesn’t want anyone reading them over his shoulder. He brings the snippets to John, sometimes. John is rapidly able to read what he’s written backwards as easily as forwards, unphased by all his odd spellings. Henry likes watching him when he reads what Henry’s written: the way his eyes go sharp with the focus of his attention, but soft with affection at the same time. When John’s particularly intent on something he’ll bite at his lip, a movement Henry is becoming increasingly fixated on. And that’s not the only thing he’s noticed. He’s frequently distracted by the sound of John’s voice, by the breadth of his shoulders, watching how his hands move when he’s passionate about something. Henry wonders what those hands would feel like on his skin. </p>
<p>Henry likes to think it’s not all one-sided, likes to imagine there is something between them, but he can’t be quite sure. He thinks, after these years at sea together, he can read John, but not for this. Other than their use of first names, John has been scrupulously correct towards Henry. Never a brush of hands, or a bump of shoulders, even in the close quarters of John’s berth. None of the usual hints that have signalled the start of his other liaisons: subtle touches on board ship, before a fumbling encounter on shore. He thinks sometimes that he can feel John’s eyes follow him, but he can never quite catch him at it. </p>
<p>He supposes he should wait, see what falls out of this, but he lacks John’s deep reserves of patience. Henry gets frustrated when words on a page don’t line up for him, or when his thoughts won’t come out right off his pen. Gets frustrated when things won’t shake out clearly. So he finds himself pushing just a bit. When Henry’s reading a book on his own, he’ll mark certain pages with scraps of paper, or add a note with quotes that drew his eye, then hand the books back to John. They’re completely innocent passages of course, and he smiles at John guilelessly when he hands each book back. </p>
<p>He hands him the Iliad, with the passage where Achilles mourns for Patroclus marked with a slip of paper, and John smiles at him.</p>
<p>“Did you like this part?” he says, then flips the book open, and sees what pages were being marked. Glances up briefly at Henry, looks briefly wrong-footed.</p>
<p>Henry returns a volume of poetry next, keeps his finger on the page and stanza that particularly appealed to him. Hands it back to John, opening the book to the page he’s marked.</p>
<p>“Could you read it to me?” he asks.</p>
<p>John holds his hand out for the book, starts to read: “Then read from the treasured volume/ The poem of thy choice/ And lend to the rhyme of the poet,” he stumbles on his words, a vanishingly rare event. Starts the line again, “And lend to the rhyme of the poet/ The beauty of thy voice.”</p>
<p>A few days later Henry borrows a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and before he hands it back he carefully writes out the line: “His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,” all the words backwards on a scrap of paper, and tucks it into first page of the book. When John pulls out the note Henry has left, while walking back to his berth. Henry watches from across the room. John stops, then looks up, stares at him, looking a little wild about the eyes. Henry grins back. </p>
<p>John is certainly looking at Henry more openly now. Henry catches him at it often, though John looks away the moment he catches Henry looking back. It feels like a victory anyway. He’s still not quite certain of the intent in the way John is watching him. He knows he wants it to be desire, but he’s just on the wrong side of not sure. </p>
<p>But days later he comes down from his watch, soaked to the bone from the rising waves. John is waiting for him, a book in his hand. </p>
<p>“Give me a moment.” Henry says, and drags off his soaked shirt, grabbing something dry. </p>
<p>Before he puts it on he meets John’s eyes, very deliberately. John colours, then turns on his heel and disappears. Henry finishes changing, then heads to find John. He’s standing in the passageway, leaned up against the wall. He hands Henry the book and his fingers brush against Henry’s, lingering for a bit too long. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Henry’s counted the time until a voyage ended before: because he was unhappy on the ship, because he missed his family, because he was bored in the last weeks of a voyage, as the ship made its way through familiar waters.  But he’s never been as desperate as this for the voyage to end, never quite felt quite like this before, something burning bright in his blood. </p>
<p>Back in London they rent a small room together. It’s common enough: just two shipmates trying to save on rent. It’s up at the back of a rooming house, with a steepled ceiling and two narrow beds. The first day, the landlady shows them up the room, and John hands her the money. She hands them a set of keys in return, and as they place their bags on the floor, she turns and makes her way back down the stairs. Henry stands with the door half ajar, listening until the sounds of footsteps fade, then he closes the door firmly, turns the key in the lock. Turns back to the room, where John has stepped to the window, and drawn the curtains firmly shut. There’s a moment of charged tension, where they just stare at one another, and then Henry steps the three steps across the room, and pushes John up against the wall, angling his head up for a kiss, thinks, finally, finally. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Henry hasn’t lived with a lover before, never had the opportunity and leisure to learn about another man like this. Back on the Gannet Henry had fantasized about what it would be like when he and John could finally touch each other. He’s delighted to find that he was right about a lot of things: John is very intently focused on Henry, very quick to learn what pleases him. There are things he hadn’t expected too: John always looks a little awed, when he gets Henry in his arms, which makes Henry feel bold, and happy. He hadn’t realized either, how much he’d like the opportunity to touch John casually.</p>
<p>They’d been so careful while on the ship that it takes them both a little while to realize they can reach out and touch now, in the safety of their rooms. That they can discuss philosophy in bed, and Henry can drape himself half over John, prop his chin on John’s chest. That they can let their hands brush absentmindedly when Henry hands John a cup of tea in the morning. That Henry can kiss John on the forehead, when John is curled into a chair focused on a book, and Henry wants his attention on him instead. Henry revels in it, a new way to show his love and know he is loved in return, in a way that’s not half hidden between lines on a page.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Before this there were few enough things that Henry liked about being on shore. Being able to see Mae is one. She’s grown now, but when Henry sees her he picks her up and spins her around, like he used to when she was a child. She seems happy, which pleases Henry. She spends the first minutes of their reunion interrogating him on where he is staying, frowning when he gives the address, which is in a rough part of town. When he says he is sharing rooms with John Bridgens, she cocks her head. </p>
<p>“The same one who got you writing your letters?”</p>
<p>When he nods, she grins: “Well bring him to dinner Henry, I want to meet the man who convinced you to sit still for long enough for something like that.”</p>
<p>And he does, of course. John is perfectly respectful, kind and attentive. Mae likes him, which makes Henry happy. He thinks this is something he likes about shore. Seeing Mae, and having John with him.</p>
<p>There are other benefits to being on shore that he is discovering. A locked door, for one. Walls, thick enough not to be heard through, so long as they are quiet.  Books too, an endless variety of them. He’s never given a thought to bookshops before, but now he visits one and is shocked by all the possibilities available to him. He’d never tell John, but he enjoys the chance to branch out from John’s particular tastes in literature. Although he thinks John understands without him saying it: he leaves a copy of <i>Frankenstein</i> on their table for Henry, one evening. Reads it to him, too, later, instead of the poetry they’ve tended towards before now, before they curl into bed together </p>
<p>A year passes, then more. Henry’s never been content on shore for this long before. But he wants to go to sea again, he can’t help it. The books have changed his idea of what he wants though: he doesn’t just want another voyage to somewhere well-travelled and known, now he wants to go somewhere new. Not just new to him, properly new. The expedition to find the Northwest Passage sounds like something out of a book, not even a story book, but one of those old Greek histories. Something grand and important, something bright and shining, something that will be remembered, and written about.</p>
<p>When he goes to see Mae that he’s volunteered for the expedition, she gives him a knowing look, and says:</p>
<p>“Mr. Bridgens is going as well?” Mae doesn’t look surprised when he nods. </p>
<p>“Well,” she says, “Two years is longer than you’ve ever stayed on shore before, suppose I should be glad it took you this long. Mind you write me. Proper letters.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Peglar gets Bridgens to read to him from ‘The Day is Done’ by Longfellow, and he writes a quote from Shakespeare’s Sonnet #63</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Anabasis by Xenophon of Athens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Being on a separate ship from John is difficult at first, but not insuperably so. Though Henry misses John deeply, there’s a comfort in knowing that he’s not far, just across the stretch of water between <i>Erebus</i> and <i>Terror</i>. There’s frequent movement of officers between the ships, which means there’s movement of sailors back and forth, most of whom are happy to bring a book across. There are a few other men on <i>Terror</i> who Bridgens supplies books to, and Henry is usually the one who rounds up the books that need to be sent back to Erebus, or hand out the ones that have come over. He finds himself turning to old techniques of communication, tucking a scrap of paper with a few words written backwards into books he’s finished with: a scrap of poetry, or a turn of phrase he liked.  </p>
<p>When he gets handed a neatly wrapped book, he traces a finger over the cover, thinks of John, knowing he has taken the time to choose the book, looked the options over carefully, chosen one he thought would suit Henry just so. He’s happy, and their progress towards the passage is good, everyone says so. The thought of the Pacific is a wonderful one. He imagines what that will be like: open water, swift sailing.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When the ships freeze into the pack-ice, it makes Henry restless. It feels wrong to be on a still ship, and there’s less work with the ships not underway, something that always makes him feel off kilter. It takes a while to get used to the ships being motionless, and he wakes at the sound of the ice against the hull. But there are advantages too. It gives him more time to read, fingers tracing across the words. He writes in his journal when there are scraps of things to remember as well. There’s more movement between the ships, and rounds of football, on the ice, at least at first when the weather is warm enough. If he steps away from a game, he’ll often see John standing on the edge of the make-shift pitch. He can go and stand at his side, talk with him a little. Hear his voice. Watch the rest of the game play out. John will clap his shoulder before they head to their separate ships, every time. It leaves a feeling of warmth in Henry that takes a long time to fade.</p>
<p>He’ll hold onto those moments later, or try to. Tries to think of John’s face when he closes his eyes, to drive away the image of all Lieutenant Gore’s blood on the ice. It doesn’t do much good. Instead, when he tries to sleep, he can hear the sound the bear had made, out there in the dark, audible even over the storm. Can see Dr. Goodsir’s face when he had seen how much blood had been spilled, and Henry had known before he spoke that it was too much for the Lieutenant to have survived it. It had been like something out of a nightmare, that night, and the long walk back to the ships. At the time he’d foolishly thought it was a fleeting nightmare, and that they’d be safe upon their return.  </p>
<p>He knows better now. For the thing had followed them back to the ships, and now it hunts them, picking men off one by one, playing with them before it kills them. He has a feeling of fear in his throat and his chest, whenever he has to stand on watch, wondering who the thing will come for next. </p>
<p>When he is not working he finds himself writing to John, desperate for something like comfort. </p>
<p>‘What is it?’ he writes, ‘Minotaur, and the ice its maze? Will it be satisfied with fourteen eaten?’</p>
<p>Henry pauses for a long while, then writes again: ‘Cyclops? Two by two Odysseus’ men are eaten.’</p>
<p>His hand is shaking and he has to stop, worrying his writing has become illegible. Later he hands the note to one of the marines who is accompanying an officer back across the ice to <i>Erebus</i>. He’s never dared a letter before, but he is feeling frantic. He thinks some of it might show in his face, because the folded bit of paper is taken without comment. </p>
<p>When the marine returns he hands Henry back the same bit of paper. Opening it, he sees, written below in a beloved hand: “Or it is the Questing Beast—and we King Arthur’s knights?”  He reads it twice, and it calms him. Makes it seem like what is out there is something from the minds of man, something to be overcome on their way to glory, instead of some dread, unknowable thing that the barren landscape has birthed to murder them. </p>
<p>It makes it easier to bear going on deck, for watch, standing out in the cold and dark. At least for a short time. But he’s on deck when the thing comes for Private Heather. He hears the single scream, cut off sharply, and when he spins to look he sees a glimpse of white fur as it goes back over the side, moving like no animal should. When he turns to find the source of the scream Heather is down on the deck, his brain open to the air. There’s a seemingly endless moment when he can feel the sight imprinting itself in his mind, knowing he’ll never be able to un-see it.</p>
<p>He’s ordered out on the search of the creature, and returns to the ship with nothing but the cold seeped deep into him. He’s greeted with the news that the ships boy had died out there in the dark. After he’s taken his slops off, and warmed his hands enough that his fingers will work, he hunches over his journal. Thinks of all the places he would rather be than this. Aboard the <i> Gannet</i>, or in London on a warm day. He wants, with a fierceness he can barely contain, someone near who’ll know he’s afraid, who’ll steady him, not so he’ll do his duty, but out of care, out of concern. Since he’s thinking of John he copies out a poem from memory, the first one he’d ever heard John recite. When he can’t remember the next line he sketches John’s tattoo, just as he had seen it last, back in England, when had pressed a kiss to John’s fingertips, his palm, his wrist, then the inked skin of John’s forearm. It helps him remember a few more lines, and he gets as far as ‘I love the C.’ Writes it twice, can’t remember more. Puts his face in his hands, lets himself just breathe, for a long moment.</p>
<p>The hardest thing to bear is that he’s afraid for John more than for himself. He wants John where he can see him. There’s little call for the steward to be in the path of danger: out on the deck at night, or worse, out on the ice. But there wasn’t any call for poor Evans, the ship’s boy, to be out there either, and his blood is still freezing into the ice and there’s no body left to mourn over. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When the Captain offers to let people berth on <i>Erebus</i> the relief is so strong he almost shakes with it.  He’s one of the first to step forward, to ask to leave <i>Terror</i>. He’s so caught in his own reasons that he’s confused for a moment, about why there’s a press of men all eager to move to the other ship as well. </p>
<p>Everyone is tense, morale is poor, and it’s exacerbated by having too many people on <i>Erebus</i>. They’re packed so tight there’s hardly room to turn around. It ratchets the tension higher for many of the men, although for others the resulting company and warmth make a welcome change. For Henry it’s certainly the latter. Much of the tension and fear he had been carrying in him loosened its hold when he had looked up from stowing his things, through the press of men, and seen John looking at him. Seen him smile when Henry noticed him. He had gone over to him immediately, and John had handed him a book. </p>
<p>“It’s Voltaire,” He had said. “I didn’t send it over before, I wanted to be to discuss it together.”</p>
<p>And they do discuss it, as the days pass, and it’s such a relief. To be able to speak to him now, whenever he likes, which is whenever he can. Henry sits with him, while John polishes the silver, or mends something, quoting snippets of Shakespeare back and forth. He feels better than he has in months, better than he has since the moment the creature first emerged out of the storm and the fog.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When John hands him <i>Anabasis</i>, along with his carefully worded warning of what’s to come for them, the fear sparks back up, but it’s not nearly as strong as before. He reads the book with careful attention, reads of all the miles those soldiers crossed. The loss, and the fear, and the final success. </p>
<p>Reading the book comforts Henry, though not, he suspects, in the way John thought it would. It doesn’t comfort Henry because of what it says, because long-dead Greek mercenaries returned home from enemy territory. Rather it comforts him because John wanted him to read it. John was so intent when he handed Henry the book. There was so much of John in the gesture, to find just the right passage from a book or a story to buffer himself with. John, who reads before something difficult, so he is ready for what comes, and can go forward clear-eyed. </p>
<p>It comforts him because John read the book first. Read it and found something in the pages that spoke to him. That he thought of Henry and this book in the same thought, because he loves them both. There’s a crease on one of the pages, where the book has been opened and re-read, over and over. He can imagine where John’s fingers have traced a line of the words, and traces them with his own fingers. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When Captain Crozier gathers the men up at Carnivale and announces the plan to walk out, Henry is very glad this is not the first he has heard of the plan. He is prepared to hear the news, there is no shock or panic in him at the thought. He looks at John briefly, and with the Captain’s words in his ears it seems like something they will manage, a long walk, but with safety at its end.</p>
<p>And then Dr. Stanley steps forward, and the flames leap up. In the stampede, he hears the screams of the men behind him who have fallen and are being caught by the flames. He manages to reach the wall of ice, and he presses up against the ice, as men push and shove, though there is nowhere to go. For a moment in the press he loses his footing, and almost goes down, knowing if he falls he will be trampled. But he catches himself, and then manages to scramble up on a slightly raised bit of ice. It gets him slightly above the fray, but the smoke here is worse, and there is nowhere else to go. In front of him Sergeant Tozer is screaming as Private Heather is crushed under foot, unheeded by all the men around him. The men who were too slow, or too hampered by their costumes to get away from the flames scream and burn and die, a terrible vision of the fate that is going to claim them all.</p>
<p>But then a way out of the tents opens, and they spill out into the night, the air shockingly cold after the inferno. Henry looks around him, and doesn’t see John. He had been at his side, before the fire started, but Henry doesn’t know where he went after. He slips through the crowd, looking for him in rising panic. Would he have known John’s voice, screaming in pain? Would he have recognized him with the flesh burning off his bones? There are many fewer men watching the tents burn than walked into them, and John is nowhere here. But then there is a hand on his shoulders, and he is being pulled into John’s arms. He smells of smoke, but they’re both here, alive, and Henry clutches at the back of John’s coat, and doesn’t let go.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Before the fire has burned itself out Captain Crozier has organized the men, sending some back to the ships for medical supplies, getting others to help tend the wounded and gather up the dead. The ruins smoke as they work, and the conflagration dies down. The smoke and the cold aggravate Henry’s throat and he coughs as he works, helping with the wounded. When there are no more wounded to help, he ventures into the smouldering ruin and starts to drag out the corpses. Most of the men seem eager to help ferry the wounded back to the ships and stay there to get some rest, something the officers are more than happy to allow, keeping back only those men who volunteer to stay. </p>
<p>Henry remains, because John is still there, helping organize the stretchers for the wounded, and seeing to the less grievous wounds. Periodically as he sifts through the wreckage, or bends over a corpse, he finds himself bolting up to track John’s location, and doesn’t bend back over his work until he’s found him. He’s started to shiver with cold, without realizing it, as the first light of the year tops the horizon. As he lays down his part of his latest load, a body burned past recognition, he feels someone drape a blanket round his shoulders. It’s John, and his hand lingers for a moment before he moves on, distributing blankets to the other working men who are without coats.</p>
<p>Henry works until exhaustion blurs his tasks before him. Salvages items from the wreckage. Peers at the charred faces of unidentified corpses, and tries to name them. The work that is left to do is dwindling, as the last of the wounded are carried back to the ships, and what can be saved from the wreckage is brought out. He finds himself making shorter and shorter circuits, trying to stay near John. When the sun sets they return to the ships, the cold is intense enough that he’s shivering with it. He carries a load of the medical supplies that had been brought out to tend the wounded. He walks beside John, who is listening to Dr. Goodsir list all the things they will have to do for the wounded when they return to the ships. When they get back, and Henry is relieved of his load, Dr. Goodsir turns to head to the wounded. </p>
<p>John gives Henry a nod, before he follows Dr. Goodsir, saying gently, “Try to get some sleep.” </p>
<p>Henry’s feet carry him to John’s berth, and without giving himself much time to think of it he slips inside, closes the door, and curls into Johns narrow bed, wraps himself in the blankets. He tries to close his eyes but he cannot rest, so instead he lights a lamp, sits himself up, and pulls down Barry Cornwall’s volume of poems from the shelf. He cradles it in his hands, and reads. He’s still reading it hours later when John stumbles to the berth, blank eyed and so dead on his feet that he is pulling his coat off before he realizes with a start that Henry is in his bed. Henry puts a finger to his lips, then stands and helps John out of the worst of his ash covered outer clothes. Helps him with his boots, pushes him to lay down, curls around him, pulling the blankets over them both. Reopens the book and in a whisper starts to read. At some point sleep claims them both.  </p>
<p>*** </p>
<p>The preparations for the long march consume their time after that. John works in the infirmary, trying to help Dr. Goodsir spread enough care among the wounded, although several of the worst cases succumb to their injuries. The work keeps Henry’s mind quiet, as provisions and supplies are assembled. In John’s berth late one night, he watches him touch the spines of each of his books, it takes him a moment to realize John is saying goodbye to them. </p>
<p>Henry is afraid again. Not of the bear now, but of the men around him, which is worse. He had seen men trample one another in the face of the flames, pull friends and comrades down to save themselves. The selfish desperation had faded with the flames, buts he’s afraid of what the men will be like with just a bit more hunger in them, a bit more fear. He doesn’t trust the men around him anymore, hasn’t felt anything like this since his time on HMS <i>Talavera</i>.</p>
<p>He tries to explain this to John.</p>
<p>“We have to decide to trust one another,” John says, “or we won’t survive. We will walk and we will trust our captains to lead us. Think of the men under Xenophon’s command, they had to trust that he would find a way forward for them. You have to trust the officers and the men beside you because otherwise you’ll drive yourself mad second-guessing.” </p>
<p>Henry nods, although he doesn’t agree. He can obey the Captain and hope he knows how to bring them out, and he can work with the other men, even though the fire has shown him how ugly and mean the need for their own survival can make them. But the only person he trusts is John. Just trusts him, without having to worry, or rationalize, or convince himself of it. He trusts that for John, Henry’s health and well-being is the same as his own. Some vicious, frantic part of himself worries that there might be something of the dreadful, mean selfishness in John too, just waiting to be revealed when things get bad enough. He pushes that part of himself down, doesn’t think he can harbour such a thought without cracking himself open. </p>
<p>Leaving the ships behind makes the world become very simple, for a while. All there is to do is lean forward into the traces, and haul. At first, he tries to think of bits of Xenophon while he works. But the blinding pain that comes and goes in his head seems to sap his memory for the words. In the first camp on King William’s Island his gums start to bleed. But John cups his face, tells him the disease is slow, which means he can survive this. He just has to keep going. He repeats that to himself as they leave the ruins of the camp behind them, along with the burning bodies of the men killed by the bear, before Captain Fitzjames’s rockets brought it down. </p>
<p>Just keep moving, he tells himself, as he leans into his harness to haul across the shale, as he spits a tooth out onto the ground, as the pain in his joints worsens, as more and more bruises bloom across his skin. Just keep yourself moving.</p>
<p>He is afraid all the time now, although even that emotion is starting to be worn down by the ever-present exhaustion. Many of the men are getting snappish and mean, almost feral with illness and hunger. They snarl at one another, and it’s only some last vestige of duty, the belief that they need one another to survive, and Captain Crozier’s diligent gaze that’s keeping everything in check. </p>
<p>Henry had worried about John’s kindness melting away from him as things worsen. What could be left of it if there was this much fear, this much pain? But he had been entirely wrong: John has not lost those parts of himself. His smile is tired, but he is gentle with Henry. Henry is glad. It makes him feel human, like something other than a rotting body, made up of suffering. They share a tent, and a sack, and try to find some warmth. At first they tried to whisper scraps of poetry back and forth, their old, loved language, but Henry is so tired now, and it’s hard to remember the lines. It’s hard even for John, who has such a memory for words.</p>
<p>They walk, set camp, and walk again. Drag the sleds behind them. Blearily Henry watches John tend to the ill, try to give them some succor, now that he is the closest thing they have to a surgeon. Man after man collapses, falling in their traces like overworked horses. None of the men who fall rise again, from their deathbeds in the sleds. So Henry makes himself keep going, even though the exhaustion has become so all-consuming rest is all he can think of. He recites a mantra to himself as they go: <i>the captain will lead us out, the captain will lead us out</i>. The words warp and shift in his head with repetition until they mean very little. <i>The captain will lead John out</i>. </p>
<p>John is often late to their tent, as he stays up and tends to the dying. Henry is so tired, but he’s always still awake when John comes to rest, kept from sleep by the pain in his hips and his knees, worse each night. </p>
<p>One night when John curls up into the sack behind him, Henry rolls over and towards him, though John is cold. Squints at John’s face in the gloom, sees how lost he looks. He gets a hand up, runs it down his cheek, watches John’s face crumple.</p>
<p>“I’m not a surgeon,” he whispers to Henry miserably, “I haven’t the skill for this.”</p>
<p>“You’re doing what you can.” Henry murmurs back, but there are tears on John’s cheeks now, and when he exhales it’s almost a sob.</p>
<p>Henry leans their foreheads together, hushing him. “It’s alright John, we’re alright.” He digs a quote out of his memory, murmuring, “I cannot rest/ I will drink life to the lees/ and love and suffer greatly with those who love me.” </p>
<p>John sighs and wraps an arm around him, pulling him closer. Henry moves so he can slot his head under John’s chin. Even this hurts him now. </p>
<p>“Sleep,” he tells John, “keep up your strength. Long way to go tomorrow.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” John agrees, “Just a little further and then we can rest properly.”</p>
<p>John’s been saying that for a while now. Henry knows John doesn’t believe it. It makes him wish he knew John less well, so he could find comfort in the lie. The fact that he is lying at all is terrifying because John believes in knowing a thing, learning it, researching it, but never flinching from the truth of it. Henry doesn’t want to think what it means for him, if John can’t bring himself to face the truth, for the first time since Henry has known him. </p>
<p>The next morning, he gets up to haul again. He is not quite sure how he does it. He was sure, almost until the moment he was on his feet, that he didn’t have the strength for it. Time is going strange for him, seeming to exist only in short moments. He places one foot, then another on the shale. John’s hand is on his shoulder, a fleeting touch. Taking just one more step. Then one more. He has stopped thinking beyond the immediate moment, because doing more than surviving it is beyond him. The Captain calls a halt, and he staggers to a standstill. Some of the men sit, but he keeps himself upright. He is not sure he will be able to stand again, if he gets off his feet. He doesn’t even have energy for curiosity when a confused tumult of voices rises up. It’s not an order to haul again so he stays still. Eventually he looks up, realizes that there are figures on the hill above, figures coming towards them. The Captain is giving orders for everyone to lay down their harness. Slowly, as his mind struggles to hold coherent thoughts, he realizes what he is seeing. A rescue party. They have done it. They have walked out.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Peglar is (mis)quoting ‘Ulysses’ by Tennyson</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Wide, Wide World by Elizabeth Wetherell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At Fort Resolution, Henry continues to recover. They’ve only been here for a few days, and all Henry feels he has done is sleep. When he wakes, more often than not, John is there, smiling at him. They’ve picked up their old careful habits again, around all these strangers. Careful not to touch, or lean in too close. </p>
<p>One morning, Henry is sitting up in the low cot, staring at the frost forming on a windowpane. It’s a bizarre feeling to have the cold out there, and him in here, warm and safe. He hears footsteps behind him, and turns to see John. He takes a seat beside him on the cot. John is smiling a happy smile, no longer shadowed by suffering. </p>
<p>“Borrowed this.” He pulls something from behind his back, and Henry jolts forward. </p>
<p>A book. Cheaply bound, and well used, but many pages long. Words and words. He takes it from John like it’s some holy relic, turns it in his hands. Touches the cover, the garish illustration of a highwayman. Traces his fingers along the title. Looks back at John, and can feel himself grinning. </p>
<p>“Read it to me?” he asks.</p>
<p>John does so, reading himself hoarse. The feeling in Henry’s chest is something he takes a long moment to recognize. He’s happy. The next day they pick it up again and keep reading. The novelty has somewhat worn off, for both of them. Henry focuses on the words instead of just the soothing cadence of John’s voice. From the look on John’ face he’s starting to do the same. </p>
<p>“Wait, wait,” says Henry. “Didn’t that character lose a hand last chapter? How can he hold two pistols? Go back.” </p>
<p>John flips back, re-reads, starts to laugh. “Seems the author forgot.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When they return to London, Henry goes and stays with Mae. She had met him when the ship had docked, crying at the sight of him. It shocks him to see how grown she is, with a wedding band on her finger. It’s strange: he had thought of England as a fixed thing, static and unchanging all the time they were gone, but things have moved forward without them. He had missed her, and there’s a certain comfort in returning to family. Moreover, it allows him to save up the back-pay he has earned, which is a comfort, since he doesn’t quite know what he and John will do with themselves for work now. </p>
<p>Mae scolds him for being too thin, her voice wobbling with emotion, and seems to take it as her personal mission to feed him enough to put weight back on his thin frame. John takes a room at a boarding house, whose only saving grace, as far as Henry can tell, is that it’s only a few minutes’ walk from Mae’s home. Mae had taken one look at Henry’s face when John had stopped by to visit on the first day, and started extending regular invitations for him to join them for dinner.</p>
<p>John visits frequently, as the weeks go by, and they go out into the city, walking, or finding somewhere to sit together, but it feels like far too little time with him to Henry, and it itches under his skin. Rankles him that they don’t have the privacy to speak completely frankly to one another, which makes him worry about John, endlessly. <i>Is he all right, is he sleeping, what is he doing, right now, right this moment</i>. And finally, it galls him, because his body seems to finally have recovered enough to want things other than surviving. </p>
<p>He is standing with John in the street one day, when a wide delivery cart goes by, and they crowd up against one another to get out of the way, and they’re suddenly standing very close. Henry looks up at John, and feels a sudden rush of want so strong, it makes his breath stutter. John looks down at him, eyes wide. They both step away from one another abruptly. </p>
<p>“Enough,” Henry declares, “is enough.”</p>
<p>The next day they start looking for lodgings for themselves. Mae gave Henry an unsurprised look when he said he and John were looking for lodgings together, and then told him she still expected them both to stop by for dinner at least once a week.</p>
<p>The place he and John find is affordable, and the noise leaks up from the street below, as John follows Henry up the narrow stairs, carrying their scant belongings. John waits at his shoulder while Henry unlocks the door, then places their things on the floor. The walls are thin, and the place is damp. There’s a stain across the ceiling. Two narrow beds. To Henry it looks like a paradise: a real door to keep the world out, a window with curtains drawn across it, a fireplace for warmth. Henry shuts and locks the door behind him. John pulls him in to kiss him breathless, almost before he gets the key out of the lock. They stumble towards the nearer bed, knocking over an ugly vase on the little table in their haste. It makes them both laugh, then shush each other, smiling into the kisses. John crowds him backwards until the back of Henry’s knees hit the bed. He grabs John by the front of his shirt, pulling him down onto the bed with him.</p>
<p>Henry stumbles on a book shop a few days later and stops in his tracks, staring at it like it’s some kind of mirage. Ventures inside. There are so many books. Henry had forgotten what a full wall of books could look like. He shouldn’t spend money; they’re both already fretting a little at how fast their back pay is going. Henry is skeptical about the rumours of pensions for the survivors. But he can’t shake the vision of all the books abandoned in John’s berth on Erebus. There are new books out now, he realizes, as he lays a finger carefully on the spine of one. Henry ends up stepping out of the shop with the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Jane Eyre</i> carefully wrapped in brown paper, and tucked up under his coat to protect them from the faint drizzle. He brings them back to their rooms, unwraps them and lays them carefully on the small table where John will see them when he returns. Picks up his journal, starts to write. When John comes in, he leans against him to kiss him on the head. Henry feels the sudden shift of his attention when he notices the books. John lifts <i>Jane Eyre</i> in his hands, turning it slowly. </p>
<p>“It’s new,” Henry tells him, “Published while we were away.”</p>
<p>He glances up at John, who’s touching the cover with the same reverence Henry had in the bookstore. </p>
<p>“Is it any good?” John asks, voice unsteady.</p>
<p>“Not sure,” Henry looks up at him, smiling. “I was waiting for you.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>They both enjoy <i>Jane Eyre</i> immensely, and it spurs them to make an effort to find and read through the books published while they were gone. There are many good ones, but every so often there’s one that isn’t. John is complaining about one such now. He waves <i>The Wide Wide World</i>, a new book from America as he speaks. Henry is laughing at him. He had started out trying to defend the merits of the book, but since he hadn’t felt much affection for it, he has given up, in favour of enjoying John’s rant instead.  Some combination of its sentimental tone, overwrought prose, and pious morals seems to have driven John to distraction. He’s lovely in the firelight, the way the light plays off his animated face, and Henry listens to him talk and watches him. Loves him, fiercely. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>In the night, Henry wakes, feeling cold. He reaches a hand beside him, and jolts upright when he realizes he’s alone in the bed. He squints into the unlit room and sees John, a dark figure in a chair by the window. He gets out of bed, dragging the quilt with him. John’s staring out into the street below, or maybe just the rain on the glass, through the half open curtains. The fire has gone cold in the grate, and John is sitting in just his nightshirt. He doesn’t look up as Henry approaches, and when Henry gets closer, he can see that he’s shivering, and his hands are clenched. Henry shuts the curtains fully, which rouses John out of his stupor. He blinks for a moment, then looks up at Henry. His eyes are distant.</p>
<p>“I didn’t mean to wake you.” John starts, then stops. After a long moment of silence, he says, “I dreamt…” Stops again, looking lost.</p>
<p>Henry kneels by his side, takes one of John’s hands in both of his. “Dreamt of the expedition?” he guesses.</p>
<p>When John nods, but continues to sit in silence, Henry tries a different tack, offering,</p>
<p>“I had a dream, which was not all a dream…” </p>
<p>John stirs a little, eyes gathering a bit more focus. Quotes back: </p>
<p>“All earth was but one thought-and that was death/ immediate and inglorious; and the pang/ of famine fed upon all entrails—men/ died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh.”</p>
<p>He takes his free hand, places it on Henry’s cheek, and adds: “And thou art dead, as young and fair/ as aught of mortal birth.”</p>
<p>Henry leans into the contact and searches for words.</p>
<p>“Two fates bear me on to the day of my death…” he starts, then breaks off to yawn, giving up on trying to corral his tired mind to dredge up more. “We came home, John, instead of getting whatever storied immortality was on offer.” </p>
<p>He gets up, wincing a little as his knees crack. Kisses John on the forehead. Untangles their hands, so he can wrap the quilt around John’s shoulders. </p>
<p>“Come on, up with you. I’m not sitting here all night.” He says, coaxing John up gently, and directing him back to bed. Gets him to lay down. Lights a match, and builds the fire up again, before he crawls back into bed. John curls towards him, buries his face against his shoulder. Henry strokes his hair, until sleep takes them both. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>They’re both still looking for work. They work odd jobs as they can find them. Henry tried to go back to working at the dock, but he’s the worse for wear, and heavy labour isn’t as easy for him as it had been. Henry thinks of the sea sometimes. His strength and stamina isn’t what it was, but Henry has seen men in worse shape than he is still working the sails. Thinks about it, turns the idea in his mind, and finds it unsatisfactory, and drops the thought again. The cold of the Arctic has changed how he weighs things now, has changed the kinds of risks he’s willing to run.</p>
<p>If Henry told John he missed the sailor’s life and wanted to return to sea, John will go as well. Would do it, without hesitation because he will follow where Henry goes, because he wants Henry to be happy. Sign on as a steward, agree to go back to years on end of not touching, of being painfully, fearfully careful of every word they speak to one another, and every look exchanged. They’d done it once before, after all. </p>
<p>But it’s different for Henry now, he’s learned to worry for John’s safety, in a way he never had before. He’d never thought their chosen profession was a safe one, even routine voyages carry their risks, but he’d always thought the risk was on his side, and was at peace with that. He has seen someone miss a handhold in the rigging and plunge to their death, seen someone swept overboard, and not surface. But now he thinks of all the other ways danger can stalk a man on a ship, even the steward. He’s seen a tropical disease sweep through a crew, leaving corpses, in its wake, and ships can founder on reef and rocks. He doesn’t want to lead John anywhere near harm, wants him to stay in this hard-won safety.</p>
<p>He is more cautious of his own safety as well, now. It stems from a thought that haunts him at night when John has woken from one of his nightmares, the ones John cannot bear to speak of, except in borrowed words from a poet. John will follow where Henry goes, and Henry can’t help but wonder at those times, what that would have meant, on that long, desperate journey, when all hope seemed lost, and death seemed to be waiting for all of them. </p>
<p>Henry wants to ask John: what would you have done if I had died out there? Wants to say: <i>you would have carried on if I was gone, wouldn’t you? You would have</i>. But he doesn’t ask, because he suspects he knows the answer, and it’s not the one he wants to hear.</p>
<p>The things Henry is willing to suffer and give up for the sea have changed and narrowed. He will not be separated from John again, not after everything. But at the same time their current situation leaves something to be desired.</p>
<p>The little room had felt like a quite a haven when they first arrived in London, but increasingly they’re both aware of how thin the walls are, how the damp makes the cold worse when the weather is bad, how careful they have to be in the crowded boarding house. There is a mounting campaign for pensions and payouts for the survivors, though. John has a thoughtful look in his eye as they follow the news on it, hoping it will actually come through. Lady Jane Franklin is publicly shaming the Admiralty with what can only be described as glee, and faced with such a formidable opponent, it looks like they are on the verge of giving way.  </p>
<p>*** </p>
<p>When the pensions come through, there’s also a reasonable lumpsum payment. Henry and John use it to set up a bookstore, in a small brick building, with a shop below and a tiny flat above. It’s quieter here, and there are no neighbours in the room beside them to hear them through the walls. The building had been a grocer’s before, so there is plenty to do before they can open. They roll up their sleeves, and get to work. </p>
<p>The morning they open the shop, Henry is bent over, sorting carefully through their new stock of books, keeping half an eye on the customers in the shop. He looks up as a woman sets a volume of <i>The Wide Wide World</i> down on the counter. Henry takes her money, and wraps her purchase for her, trying not to grin like a fool as he does it. Waiting a moment after she leaves the shop, he steps outside to look up at John, who’s on a step-stool, fussing with hanging their shop’s new sign. He comes down when Henry appears, and Henry picks up the stool for him. John looks down the street at the departing woman and raises an eyebrow at Henry. </p>
<p>“First sale?” he asks.</p>
<p>Henry takes a moment to make sure there’s no one in earshot.</p>
<p>“Yes, love.” he replies, with a grin. “Don’t ask what she bought though, you’ll despair of her taste.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Peglar and Bridgens quote from ‘Darkness’ and ‘And Thou art Dead, as Young and Fair’ by Byron, and from the ‘Iliad’.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title from ‘The Day is Done’ by Longfellow</p></blockquote></div></div>
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